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Expanding Disposition Theory: Reconsidering Character Liking, Moral Evaluations, and Enjoyment
Abstract
In an attempt to expand the scope of the disposition theory of drama and to further explore the enjoyment of media entertainment, this article reexamines how viewers form and maintain strong feelings toward media characters. To that end, schema-theory literature is employed to offer possible alternative processes by which these bonds are first formed. Secondly, the article investigates the ways that viewers seek to perpetuate and defend those strong feelings for the sake of enjoyment. Several attitude and perception theories are examined to further inform our understanding of enjoyment. Finally, the article considers the potential implications on the disposition theory of drama and on our understanding of media enjoyment in general.
... Perceptions of a character's "typicality-the idea that a character is representative of probable experiences with similar characters and individuals, and plausibility-the idea that the character could actually exist" (Frazer et al., 2023, p. 178; see also Cho et al., 2014;Hall, 2003). & Cantor, 1976; see also Grizzard et al., 2023;Raney, 2004). Perceived character morality and character liking are thus the two variables most central to the disposition formation process, per ADT. ...
... Perceived character morality and character liking are thus the two variables most central to the disposition formation process, per ADT. Extensions of ADT have incorporated elements of Bandura (1986Bandura ( , 2016 selective moral disengagement paradigm (see Raney, 2004;cf. Tamborini et al., 2018) as a biasing factor in moral judgments. ...
... We included perceived morality and liking as the other outcome variables to offer evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Perceived morality has direct links to character role as defined by heroes and villains, with heroes being highly moral and villains being highly immoral (see Grizzard et al., 2023;Raney, 2004;Tamborini et al., 2018). Showing that the character role manipulation has a strong influence on perceived morality and a minimal influence on character depth would provide evidence of discriminant validity, whereby character depth is not simply a replicate measure of character morality. ...
... ADT seeks to explain the emotional responses of audiences to characters and their outcomes in fictional narratives, positing that pleasure is derived when characters receive the rewards they merit (Raney, 2003;Klimmt and Vorderer, 2003;Schibler, 2022). Its primary function is to elucidate the process of engaging with media narratives (Raney, 2004) and has garnered significant recognition within the academic community (Oliver et al., 2019). ADT posits that the audience continuously monitors the characters and their behavior, meaning the intensity of the audience's emotional attachment to these characters may change over the course of the narrative, potentially impacting enjoyment (Raney, 2004). ...
... Its primary function is to elucidate the process of engaging with media narratives (Raney, 2004) and has garnered significant recognition within the academic community (Oliver et al., 2019). ADT posits that the audience continuously monitors the characters and their behavior, meaning the intensity of the audience's emotional attachment to these characters may change over the course of the narrative, potentially impacting enjoyment (Raney, 2004). Zillmann and Cantor (1976) proposed that our emotional reactions to characters in a narrative, especially the main characters, significantly influence our overall appreciation of the narrative (Zillmann, 2003). ...
... Therefore, this study incorporates ADT into the transportation model and investigates the role of AD as a variable influencing audience narrative immersion when watching international TV dramas. Raney (2004) posited that audience's knowledge and experience serve as the foundation for evaluating characters. Green et al. (2004) posited that audience immersion in a narrative necessitates a connection with the characters. ...
Background
The globalization of the media market is forcing decision-makers to understand the psychological processes behind local audiences’ enjoyment of foreign TV dramas. Transportation is a well-established psychological theory and framework utilized to elucidate and anticipate audience engagement and enjoyment in the cognitive process of experiencing a narrative text. Although there is a substantial body of literature on transportation and media enjoyment, there is a noticeable absence of studies on the relationship between audiences being “transported” into the narrative world of TV dramas and, particularly, the pleasure audiences derive from interacting with media content within a cross-cultural acceptance context.
Method
The research employs a quantitative design, with responses collected from 353 students enrolled at a Malaysian public university. It aims to validate the influence of social norms, cultural identity, and affective disposition on narrative immersion while watching foreign TV dramas, as well as the subsequent enjoyment of media among local audiences.
Results
The results indicate that social norms, cultural identity, and affective disposition significantly influence transportation and enjoyment. Furthermore, the influence of cultural identity on social norms has a positive moderating effect on transportation.
Discussion
Storytelling that complies with social norms while offering new perspectives can maximally engage audiences, potentially altering their narrative cognition and deepening their immersion in fictional narratives. Cultural identity can shape audience perceptions and reactions to cross-cultural media consumption, ultimately influencing the degree to which audiences are drawn into the narrative. Furthermore, the audience’s emotional connection to characters in the narrative or to situations in the drama significantly influences the overall cognitive and immersion levels.
... ADT's parsimony and power have influenced scholarly thinking in media psychology specifically (see for examples, Oliver et al., 2019;Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2021;Weber et al., 2008) and communication science more generally (see Holbert, 2005;Marett, 2015;Peifer & Landreville, 2020). Moreover, extensions of ADT logic have abounded in recent years (see for examples, Frazer et al., 2023;Raney, 2004;Sanders, 2010;Tamborini, Grizzard, et al., 2021). The goal of this chapter is to provide a highly focused, mechanistic overview of ADT's hypotheses and effects and the processes and variables from which they emerge. ...
... The schema-activation route of disposition formation was posited by Raney (2004) as an extension of ADT. Raney argued that viewers could form and maintain dispositions toward characters based on a character's role in a narrative as either protagonist or antagonist. ...
... These desired behaviors are determined in part by viewers' dispositions toward characters. When viewers hold positive dispositions, the viewers want the character to behave in a manner that will help them achieve their goals and receive a positive ending (see Raney, 2004). Recent research suggests that viewers will even want moral, liked characters to engage in immoral behaviors if those behaviors will improve the liked character's chances of a positive ending (see . ...
Affective disposition theory (ADT) applies a social scientific approach to explain how audiences evaluate narratives. ADT was originally introduced over 50 years ago in order to explain the appeal of humor, and over time it became a leading theory in entertainment research specifically and media psychology research more broadly. In this chapter, we provide an in-depth account of ADT's predictions and the research supporting and extending the theory. We first explicate the three subpro-cesses of ADT. These processes include (1) disposition formation (i.e., how viewers come to like or dislike characters), (2) anticipatory responses (i.e., what viewers hope or fear will happen to characters), and (3) outcome evaluation (how viewers judge whether narrative events are pleasing or displeasing). We further discuss current research directions by which scholars have been making considerable advances to disposition theorizing in recent years, including innovative methodologies, increased specification of ADT concepts, new theoretical pathways, and improved measurement techniques. Overall, we show how decades of research support the predictive and explanatory power of ADT, and how ongoing work continues to improve the theory for future applications.
... Viewers' feelings toward media characters can be classified on a continuum from very negative to very positive affects. These affective dispositions result from viewers monitoring the characters' behaviors and categorizing them as moral and immoral behaviors (Raney, 2004;Zillmann & Cantor, 1977). Viewers tend to like characters they evaluate as morally good and dislike characters they perceive as acting immorally (Zillmann, 2006). ...
... Do viewers get habituated to immoral behaviors through PSRs with immoral media characters, and how does this desensitization influence their acceptance of immoral behaviors in real-life or their own behaviors? In this context, viewers' moral disengagement-the process by which people accept behaviors they would normally judge to be immoral (Raney, 2004)-should additionally be considered. For example, by comparing viewers' moral disengagement for fictional behaviors of media characters they have PSRs with versus their moral disengagement for real-life behaviors. ...
... However, it could be that violations of purity and authority are only less relevant due to the mediated setting of both studies or due to viewers' activation of story schemas. It is possible that the relationship between morality domains and PSRs are additionally influenced by story schemas that viewers activate when consuming media content, and which are based on previous experiences with similar media content (Raney, 2004). Thus, future research would be needed to further explore the role of these five moral domains in viewers' relationships with different media characters, in different settings, and with different kinds of morality violations. ...
The morality of a media character’s behavior and its influence on viewers’ parasocial relationships (PSRs) are analyzed based on different theoretical perspectives on media entertainment and psychological theories. Affective disposition theory is used to explain the relationship between moral judgments and character liking. Viewers’ connections with media characters are analyzed in the context of longer-term PSRs. Accordingly, morality is treated as a multidimensional construct that consists of care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and purity. These five moral domains are applied to viewers’ moral foundations and to the behaviors of media characters. Additionally, viewers’ moral expectations and their influence on viewers’ PSRs are considered based on the expectancy violations theory. In an experimental study, the morality of a character’s behavior was manipulated (moral vs. ambiguous vs. immoral), and the effect on viewers’ PSRs based on their moral foundations and moral expectations in the five moral domains was analyzed. The results show that while moral behavior generally strengthens viewers’ PSRs, different effects emerge when viewers’ moral foundations and expectations are considered. The different patterns that emerged between the five moral domains underline the importance of a multidimensional approach to morality in this mediated setting.
... I seek to test the proposed disposition formation process contained in the MADT framework. In addition, a central theorem of an expanded ADT (EADT), as proposed by Raney (2004; see also Raney & Janicke, 2013), is that viewing experiences or schemata (e.g., MAPs are created to be liked) guide people's moral judgment, so they interpret MAPs' behaviors more favorably. In this case, viewers might struggle to reconcile the moral conflict, which likely produces discomfort. ...
... As prior research suggests, viewers develop schemata for MAPs in which they function as forces for good, designed to be liked, even if they possess flaws and weaknesses (Raney, 2004;Raney & Janicke, 2013). Due to such schemata, viewers likely try to locate positive qualities in MAPs, so that they can approve of their behaviors. ...
... This distinction is important; moral judgments likely differ when applied to protagonists versus antagonists. Previous research suggests that viewers have existing schemata that predispose them to like protagonists (Raney, 2004). This predisposition may lead viewers to interpret moral violations by protagonists in a positive light, such as attributing their actions to some noble purpose or assuming they suffer moral qualms. ...
Building on moral foundations theory, this article explores which combinations of moral ambiguity domains (care–harm, care–unfairness, fairness–harm, and fairness–unfairness) exhibited by morally ambiguous protagonists (MAPs) in movies evoke a stronger sense of moral conflict in viewers. It further explores viewers’ moral judgment process when they perceive moral conflicts in protagonists who demonstrate moral ambiguity. Study 1, using a measurement-of-mediation design, confirms a moral judgment process; perceived moral conflict encourages viewers to infer that the protagonists suffer a disturbed moral conscience when they find justification in MAPs’ motives for their behaviors. Such inferences lead to the approbation of their behaviors and then result in eudaimonic experiences and a sense of self-expansion. With a moderation-of-process design, Study 2 provides further evidence that behavioral approbation has a mediating role in viewers’ appreciation processes. Click the link for a free copy: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/DDPGVAIMWZZ2E23EJHZZ/full?target=10.1080/15205436.2024.2347333
... Moreover, it extends previous research that predominantly conceptualized (para-)social relationships as positively valenced (Liebers & Schramm, 2019). As media users also form relationships with characters toward whom they harbor an aversion (Hartmann et al., 2008; affective disposition theory, Raney, 2004), this one-sided perspective is conceptually dubious and unnecessarily limiting (Dibble & Rosaen, 2011). As further specified by Tukachinsky Forster and Click (2023), such non-amicable relationships can entail feelings of discomfort, dislike, and even animosity. ...
... Fictional friends/enemies: 1st aid after ostracism psychological processes underlying the cognitive activation of disliked media characters. Following affective disposition theory (Raney, 2004;Zillmann, 1996), negative feelings toward media characters trigger emotional responses such as counter-empathy or grief. As they somewhat overlap with the negative dimension of emotional well-being-operationalized with items such as "unpleasant" or "angry" (Diener et al., 2010)-it seems plausible that this specific coping strategy is less effective than thinking about liked characters. ...
... Importantly, communication research can benefit from examining different discrete emotions (i.e., anger, desire, anxiety, sadness, and happiness) more closely (Nabi, 2010). Given the variety of emotional responses media users experience toward (dis)liked media personae (Raney, 2004), using this approach in future research may uncover subtle emotional consequences of PSR coping. As another limitation, all three studies only tested specific components of the TNTM (Williams, 2009). ...
Being socially excluded seriously threatens individuals’ need to belong and emotional well-being. This article investigates to what extent different coping strategies help overcome these detrimental effects: thinking about real-life friends/enemies (i.e., orthosocial relationships, OSRs) and thinking about (dis)liked media characters (i.e., parasocial relationships, PSRs). Across three experiments (NPilot = 129, NStudy1 = 132, NStudy2 = 855), we first induced social exclusion using a virtual ball-tossing game. Afterward, we manipulated different relationship types and valences and compared them to non- or less-relational control conditions. As hypothesized, belongingness and emotional well-being increased from pre- to post-coping. This effect was fully mediated by perceived relationship closeness to the respective person(a). Highlighting that PSRs represent more than surrogates (i.e., secondary replacements of OSR), both relationship types did not differ in coping effectiveness. Moreover, positive relationships were more effective in fulfilling both coping goals than negative ones.
... To form their affective dispositions toward media characters, viewers use their moral judgments to evaluate the characters' actions (Raney & Janicke, 2013;Zillmann & Cantor, 1977). The success of morally ambiguous characters who display clearly immoral behaviors challenges ADT's predictions (Raney, 2004), as viewers positively engage with MACs despite their immoral actions. This resulted in a lot of research analyzing viewers' engagement with morally challenging characters (e. g., Eden et al., 2011;Frazer & Moyer-Gusé, 2023;Kleemans et al., 2017;Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2015;Oliver et al., 2019;Raney, 2004). ...
... The success of morally ambiguous characters who display clearly immoral behaviors challenges ADT's predictions (Raney, 2004), as viewers positively engage with MACs despite their immoral actions. This resulted in a lot of research analyzing viewers' engagement with morally challenging characters (e. g., Eden et al., 2011;Frazer & Moyer-Gusé, 2023;Kleemans et al., 2017;Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2015;Oliver et al., 2019;Raney, 2004). These studies used and tested different approaches to why viewers can positively engage with immoral characters and underlined the importance of the relationship between morality and character liking. ...
... The viewers' affective disposition toward a media character is an important mechanism in explaining the processing of MACs (Eden et al., 2011;Raney, 2004;Raney & Janicke, 2013). Character liking is strongly related to the viewer's morality perception of a media character; characters who uphold moral standards are generally liked more, but once viewers have started to like a character, they are also more likely to excuse moral violations Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2015;Shafer & Raney, 2012). ...
Parasocial relationships are examined in diverse contexts and with various media characters, from news presenters to fictional movie heroes. A popular character trope in recent productions is the morally ambiguous media character (MAC). MACs disrupt the dichotomy between hero and villain, simultaneously exhibiting moral and immoral behavior. MACs attracted the attention of researchers, but little is known about parasocial relationships with them. This study examines these relationships by applying a multidimensional morality approach. The five moral domains of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity are considered for the media character and the viewers. The role of these moral domains in parasocial relationships with morally ambiguous media characters was examined through an online survey (N = 250). The results show that moral behavior generally and moral behavior in care, fairness, and loyalty increased the strength of parasocial relationships, regardless of the viewer’s moral foundations. The characters’ behavior in authority and purity did not influence the viewers’ general morality perception nor their parasocial relationships with them. The study contributes to the existing literature about MACs by considering viewers’ parasocial relationships, their moral foundations, and the perceived morality in each of the five moral domains.
... According to the disposition-based integrated model of enjoyment (Raney, 2002(Raney, , 2004; see also Zillmann & Cantor, 1976), moral evaluation is an important component of character evaluation and identification with it. Raney (2004) argued that individuals, by relying on mental schema concerning the character's role, can understand whether a character is good or bad (e.g., the hero should be a morally good character). ...
... According to the disposition-based integrated model of enjoyment (Raney, 2002(Raney, , 2004; see also Zillmann & Cantor, 1976), moral evaluation is an important component of character evaluation and identification with it. Raney (2004) argued that individuals, by relying on mental schema concerning the character's role, can understand whether a character is good or bad (e.g., the hero should be a morally good character). The character's role and associated schema, therefore, provide us with lenses through which to interpret its actions. ...
... Literature has broadly identified two sets of factors that can be predictive of character morality. The first was expressed by Raney (2004Raney ( , 2011, who explained the liking for these characters by relying on the concept of moral disengagement (Bandura, 2006), implying a set of cognitive justifications that reduce the moral negativity of a given behavior (Janicke & Raney, 2018). ...
Focusing on the "Game of Thrones" saga, we investigated among fans (N = 338) whether social dominance orientation (SDO) is associated with morality attributed to characters of TV fictions and, in turn, individuals' worldviews. We further considered the distinction in SDO-Dominance (SDO-D) and SDO-Antiegaliatarianism (SDO-A). Results revealed that SDO-D was positively associated with morality attributed to characters using harsh power-achievement strategies; SDO-A was negatively associated with morality attributed to characters fighting for collective interests and supporting equality principles. Morality attributed to some characters mediated the associations of the two SDO dimensions with par-ticipants' worldview about pursuing collective rather than individual interests.
... Zillmann and Cantor's (1977) affective disposition theory predicts that a viewer's emotional responses to a character are shaped by moral judgments about the character's actions. If the actions are deemed benevolent or justifiable, the viewer will come to regard the character favorably, and the viewer's emotional responses will align with the character's emotions (Raney, 2004). Conversely, if the actions are deemed malevolent, the viewer will come to regard the character unfavorably, and the viewer's emotional responses will misalign with the character's emotions. ...
... Otherwise, the visual narrative cannot function as a story. In addition to traditional heroes, we can feel affinity for antiheroes, even a rogue like Shakespeare's Falstaff or a murderer like Chikamatsu's Yohei, both of whom fell victim to circumstances (Gerstle, 1996;Raney, 2004). Because context determines our affinity for a character, it also determines the character's vulnerability to the uncanny valley and, in turn, our feelings about the performance. ...
In Japan, robotics projects like Geminoid, modeled after Hiroshi Ishiguro, exhibit a fascination with creating human doubles. Yet, warnings against this also thread through Japanese thought, from the Edo-period playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724) to the robotics professor Mori Masahiro (1927–2025). Though centuries apart, they describe the same uncanny valley phenomenon—eerie, cold, repellent feelings that arise when confronting the imperfectly human. In an interview with Hozumi Ikan, translated here, Chikamatsu presents a theory of realism exemplified through puppet theater and kabuki. He divides realism into four zones: the unreal, conceptual realism, surface realism, and the real. The unreal lacks authenticity, surface realism lacks soul, and the real lacks expressiveness. For Chikamatsu, it is conceptual realism that captivates an audience. A play's unfolding events evoke empathy and emotion through their meaning for the characters. Similarly, Mori divides realism into four zones: industrial, humanoid, and android robots, and real people. Industrial robots evoke little affinity, and androids risk appearing eerie. Though real people evoke the most affinity, androids cannot become indistinguishable from them. For Mori, only humanoid robots evoke affinity without risking uncanniness. By exploring anthropomorphism, both Chikamatsu and Mori illuminate principles for designing robots that do not unsettle but delight.
... In doing so, we bring together different research traditions that contribute to our understanding of schadenfreude. First, we lay the foundation with Affective Disposition Theory (ADT; e.g., Cantor, 1976, 1977;Zillmann, 2000Zillmann, , 2011Zillmann, , 2013Raney, 2004), which is well established in media psychology. Second, we elucidate different approaches to investigating schadenfreude from a social psychology perspective (e.g., Wang et al., 2019). ...
... ADT was further expanded by Raney (2004), who added two propositions referring to the formation and maintenance of affective dispositions. First, "[t]he initial formation of an affective disposition toward a character may at times actually precede specific moral evaluations of the character" (p. ...
Suffering and misfortunes of other people are often portrayed in the media. Recipients react to these portrayals with different emotions. This article elucidates and clarifies schadenfreude (pleasure at the misfortune of others) and sympathy (feeling concern or sorrow over another person’s distress) in media experiences. A thorough literature review provides in-depth insights into the formation of affective dispositions and schadenfreude from various psychological perspectives. This conceptual analysis leads to the “Model of Individual and Social Appraisals of Misfortunes of Others” (MISAM) which first reveals the determining intrapersonal factors within the emotional experience of schadenfreude and sympathy. Second, it discloses the social component vital for understanding the construction and regulation of these emotions. The model combines individual and social appraisal processes and identifies the factors involved in the elicitation and regulation of schadenfreude and sympathy in the media reception of misfortunes. With the aim of integrating different perspectives, we incorporated Affective Disposition Theory and recent work from social psychology and used an appraisal framework. The MISAM opens the path for further investigation of schadenfreude and sympathy in media reception, beyond entertainment experiences.
... The findings enrich ADT in particular. In line with the disposition formation process outlined in ADT (Raney, 2002(Raney, , 2004Zillmann, 2000), we confirm that moral judgments of an agent influence viewers' affective disposition toward that character. Also, consistent with prior research (Eden et al., 2011), we demonstrate that dispositions toward characters affect viewers' enjoyment. ...
... As expected, individual differences are critical in the disposition formation process; participants' intolerance of morally debatable behaviors amplifies their perceived immorality of the agent's behaviors. Furthermore, whereas prior research often focuses on one major character and questions whether enjoyment depends on viewers' affective disposition toward that character and their positive or negative experiences (Raney, 2004), the current study takes a different approach. It demonstrates that, when taking the object's perspective, viewers evaluate the agent with whom the object interacts, and those evaluations influence their enjoyment. ...
To understand how viewers respond to two common movie plots (falling in love and cheating), this study considers the perspectives they might take. Study 1 tests which protagonists’ perspective viewers adopt when watching movies with falling-in-love versus betrayal plots. Study 2 then shows that viewers’ perspective orientation influences their affective experiences and enjoyment of betrayal movies but not falling-in-love movies. Study 3 explores the processes that lead to varying levels of enjoyment, attained by viewing movies with falling-in-love and cheating plots. A moderated mediation model reveals three processes: affective states resulting from goal attainment/failure, meaning derived through identification, and affective dispositions formed according to moral judgments. Viewers’ romantic beliefs moderate the second process, and their morality standards moderate the third.
... It is possible that the character's place in the narrative may help clarify. According to affective disposition theory (see Raney, 2004), viewers are more likely to dislike characters that are in some way immoral -in all likelihood, the villain. Even though these types of characters are not liked by viewers, they do seem to serve an important narrative role; when they are removed from the story, their absence may represent the end of a conflict that drives the show forward. ...
... It is possible that negative PSRs are necessary from a narrative perspective. This view is in line with affective and expanded disposition theory (Raney, 2004), which suggests that viewers form negative dispositions with immoral characters and actively hope for bad outcomes for such disliked characters. In this way, the disliked character is part of the motivation to continue, as the viewer longs to see them punished. ...
... Morality plays a key role in several media entertainment theories and can be a source of media enjoyment (see Oliver & Bartsch, 2010;Raney, 2004Raney, , 2011Zillmann & Bryant, 1975). Media users are often predisposed to like the protagonists and expect them to be morally just (Raney, 2004). ...
... Morality plays a key role in several media entertainment theories and can be a source of media enjoyment (see Oliver & Bartsch, 2010;Raney, 2004Raney, , 2011Zillmann & Bryant, 1975). Media users are often predisposed to like the protagonists and expect them to be morally just (Raney, 2004). Positive dispositions and moral expectations toward the protagonist may be especially true in video games, since the players are controlling the protagonist and are the ones making the moral decisions. ...
Research has shown that performing moral or immoral actions in video games can affect the players’ moral self-worth and evoke moral emotions. People may compensate for their immoral behaviors by performing more moral actions, but sometimes performing moral actions can also license them to perform immoral behaviors later. The current study examines whether players engage in moral licensing or moral cleansing behaviors within and after video game moral scenarios. Study 1 is an exploratory study that examined a sequence of moral dilemmas in the game Papers, Please, and found that players alternated between choosing the moral choices and the accurate choices, indicating signs of moral balancing when faced with moral choices that conflict with their in-game goals. Study 2 utilized a 3 (moral vs. immoral vs. control) × 2 (congruent charity vs. incongruent charity) experiment using a moral event in the game Life is Strange to examine the moderating effects of issue congruency on moral balancing. Study 3 used three different games to replicate Study 2. The findings showed that players who performed moral actions in the game also devoted more efforts to a charity on a congruent issue. However, participants who performed a moral behavior in the game committed significantly less effort to a charity on an incongruent issue, indicating a moral licensing effect. Study 2 found that performing immoral actions in a game can motivate players to devote more efforts to a subsequent charity, regardless of issue congruity, but this moral cleansing effect was not observed in Study 3.
... Within media contexts, affective disposition theory posits that moral judgments about media characters influence enjoyment of media (Raney, 2004;Zillmann & Cantor, 1977). When a character's behavior is seen as moral, then there is an attachment to or care for the character. ...
... When a character's behavior is seen as moral, then there is an attachment to or care for the character. Raney (2004) contends that the stronger the reaction to the character, the greater the enjoyment. For instance, Baker and Raney (2007) found that traditional gender roles, as evidenced through superheroes in children's cartoons, socialize children to elevate moral behaviors attached to male characters. ...
... Similarly, affective disposition theory (Raney, 2003) suggests that audiences may be more likely to identify with positive characters, such as heroes, as they align with most viewers' morals. By contrast, antiheroes engender empathy only if a justification sufficient to warrant moral disengagement is provided (Raney, 2004;Shafer & Raney, 2012). ...
... Indeed, people can report enjoyment of negative media content, such as sad stories (Oliver, 1993). Furthermore, affective disposition research suggests enjoyment will be high when liked characters experience desired outcomes and when disliked characters experience undesired consequences (Raney, 2004). In line with this, peak-and-end theory also suggests that people do not evaluate experience in an event by averaging their emotional reactions across the event. ...
... Disposition theories of media enjoyment provides some understanding of how consumers justify violence and aggression. Evaluations of aggressive acts are likely to be predicted by how much the consumer likes the perpetrator (Raney, 2004). In other words, consumers are more likely to enjoy aggressive acts when good things happen to likable characters and bad things happen to unlikeable characters. ...
... In other words, consumers are more likely to enjoy aggressive acts when good things happen to likable characters and bad things happen to unlikeable characters. Raney (2004) and Martins et al. (2020) further suggested that viewers may excuse bad behaviors (moral indifference) of the characters they like and evaluate the actions of characters they do not like more unforgivingly. ...
On-field aggression can attract and entertain sport consumers. However, the promotion of aggression in sport has been controversial, as societal shift s raise questions about how much aggression in sport is appropriate. Therefore, this study seeks to better understand the relationship between on-fi eld aggression and fandom by examining how two motives (physical aggression and violence) predict sport fan passion for three categories of sports (limited-contact, full-contact, and combat). An online questionnaire was utilized to solicit responses from 540 adult sports fans. Overall, results of this study showed consumers’ physical aggression motive influenced sport fan passion for low-contact and full-contact sports except for ice-hockey. However, consumers’ violence motive influenced combat sport passion (i.e., boxing, MMA). Results inform marketers how aggression motivates consumers and how to market this type of content across different sports.
... In the present context, it seems clear that the valence of the abortion-seeking character is a key determinant of whether they are likely to be perceived as an attractive model (e.g., Mayrhofer & Naderer, 2019). As supported by complementary scholarship on involvement with characters (e.g., Raney, 2004;Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010), a viewer's evaluation of a character is likely to depend on whether they judge the character's qualities and actions to be generally "good" or "bad." Thus, when a storyline casts the abortion-seeking character in a positive light, they are more likely to elicit involvement from the viewer-and when the character is presented negatively, the viewer's disapproval should impede involvement. ...
... The thresholds for when relevance is perceived to be "sufficient" and which factors influence this perception require further theorizing. Possibly, the way values or beliefs are presented and made salient (Tamborini et al., 2021), situational factors (e.g., romantic comedy may be perceived as more relevant after a break-up), or a reliable story scheme (Raney, 2004; e.g., predictable happy endings might reduce the relevance of portrayed actions) prove to be relevant in this regard. For the time being, however, the model helps to explain the novel pathway between (conventional, low-effort) hedonic and (conventional, higheffort) eudaimonic states. ...
The dual-process perspective in entertainment research differentiates between hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences. Hedonic responses are thought to result from relatively effortless reception of non-challenging (or “light”) media fare. In contrast, eudaimonic entertainment experiences are theorized to depend on cognitively or affectively challenging content (e.g., tragedies) and effortful reflection. The present work builds on the meaning-as-information framework and the meaning-making model to suggest a conceptual alternative. We argue that audience members can have eudaimonic experiences—particularly, meaningful experiences—without intense challenges and cognitive labor by detecting meaning in messages that affirm (or “celebrate”) their core values. An online experiment ( N Study1 = 275) and a pre-registered replication ( N Study2 = 253) with viewers of short video clips provided substantial support for this proposition. Our discussion highlights that the analytical differentiation of low-effort hedonic and high-effort eudaimonic modes of entertainment needs revision.
... Moreover, it was limited to the examination of fictional characters. Raney (2004) has argued that we respond to real-life moral events differently than fictional moral events. If so, it is important to understand how heroes and villains are distinguished in real-life and how conceptualizations of heroes and villains differ between reality and fantasy. ...
Moral foundations theory posits that five domains of morality (care, fairness, authority, loyalty, purity) govern moral judgment. Study 1 showed that care and fairness were consistently upheld/violated by heroes/villains while other domains varied. Study 2 showed that consistency in upholding/violating domains predicted perceiving characters as heroes/villains and liking.
... The Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) draws on exemplification to explain people's entertainment experiences. Based on extensive research and theorizing, MIME has demonstrated that moral judgments play a key role in the entertainment experience (Eden et al., 2021;Raney, 2004;Tamborini, 2011;Zillmann & Cantor, 1977). Drawing from Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), MIME hypothesizes the existence of five moral modules: harm/care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity. ...
... Enjoyment is often conceptualised in literature as 'the sense of pleasure that one derives from consuming media products' (Raney, 2004, p. 349). Media enjoyment studies suggest this pleasure may relate to viewers' mood, their pre-existing attitudes about the genre, or reasons for watching (Raney, 2004). Enjoyment can also result from narrative engagement, where a more engaging narrative typically yields higher enjoyment. ...
... The results also showed that viewers derived significantly less enjoyment from the videos without sound. Prior research has shown that viewers' sentiments towards film characters and their overall enjoyment hinge on "a viewer's affective disposition towards characters" [77]. The ability to hear film characters speak enables viewers to connect with the characters' emotions, fostering an affective disposition towards them. ...
Every day, millions of viewers worldwide engage with subtitled content, and an increasing number choose to watch without sound. In this mixed-methods study, we examine the impact of sound presence or absence on the viewing experience of both first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) viewers when they watch subtitled videos. We explore this novel phenomenon through comprehension and recall post-tests, self-reported cognitive load, immersion, and enjoyment measures, as well as gaze pattern analysis using eye tracking. We also investigate viewers’ motivations for opting for audiovisual content without sound and explore how the absence of sound impacts their viewing experience, using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Our goal is to ascertain whether these effects are consistent among L2 and L1 speakers from different language varieties. To achieve this, we tested L1-British English, L1-Australian English and L2-English (L1-Polish) language speakers (n = 168) while they watched English-language audiovisual material with English subtitles with and without sound. The findings show that when watching videos without sound, viewers experienced increased cognitive load, along with reduced comprehension, immersion and overall enjoyment. Examination of participants’ gaze revealed that the absence of sound significantly affected the viewing experience, increasing the need for subtitles and thus increasing the viewers’ propensity to process them more thoroughly. The absence of sound emerged as a global constraint that made reading more effortful. Triangulating data from multiple sources made it possible to tap into some of the metacognitive strategies employed by viewers to maintain comprehension in the absence of sound. We discuss the implications within the context of the growing trend of watching subtitled videos without sound, emphasising its potential impact on cognitive processes and the viewing experience.
... There are many examples of characters being successfully depicted as heroes, including McClane from the opening to this chapter. Most people enjoy seeing good things happen to these characters (see Raney 2004 for review), and people don't typically root for their failure. Their success is in part because the viewer is sufficiently psychologically distant from a fictional hero, and in part because writers are able to build many of these morally good characters without flaws (e.g., Captain America). ...
... Through examining morally ambiguous characters, these studies have found that the relationship between morality and enjoyment of media is a complex relationship. One explanation is that we are predisposed to "like" some characters based on story or character schemas developed from our experiences, which biases our judgments to favor these characters and more likely to excuse their wrongdoings (Raney, 2004). Studies have shown that users and media narratives often apply moral disengagement strategies that aid the users in disassociating the likable character's behaviors from moral judgments, such as framing the immoral action as altruistic or retribution for justice, masking the consequences of the immoral actions, or diffusion of responsibilities (Bandura, 1999;Hartmann et al., 2014;Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel, 2013). ...
Many entertainment media theories highlight justice as a key element affecting media narratives and audience enjoyment. According to the justice motive theory, individuals have an innate need to perceive the world as orderly and fair, where actions yield commensurate consequences. This study argues that unlike the real world or many other media which may or may not adhere to justice principles, video games inherently operate on rule-based systems that foster predictability and justice experiences. Through an online survey, this research explores how individuals’ beliefs in a just world for themselves and others relate to various video game attributes and potential adverse effects. The results indicate that the belief that the world is just to oneself correlates with playing strategy games and reduced loneliness. In contrast, the belief that the world should be just for others is associated with restorative actions such as playing moral characters, engaging in violence to restore justice, and playing multiplayer games that involve collaboration and competition. Belief in a just world shows no significant association with escapism or problematic gaming.
... For instance, in an experiment comparing preferences for games featuring sexualized and non-sexualized female protagonists, Hartmann and Klimmt (2006) reported that women reported greater dislike of the game with the sexualized character. Character liking is an important predictor in potentiating effects from encounters with media characters (e.g., Nathanson et al., 2002;Raney, 2004). Mixed evidence exists regarding how much audiences like characters depicted in ways that emphasize overgeneralized attributes thought to be indicative of an entire social group (i.e., stereotyped characters). ...
Sexualization is a prominently studied dimension of how media content contributes to problematic outcomes for women (e.g., self-objectification). In video game contexts, scholars have debated whether portrayals of powerful characters may disrupt undesirable outcomes of sexual objectification. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated sex appeal cues and strength cues in female characters. Participants reported their impressions in terms of key person perception outcomes and liking of the characters. We also aimed to understand how interactivity shapes impression formation by comparing viewing (Study 1) to playing (Study 2) contexts. Results indicated that sex appeal cues and strength cues interacted to shape character impressions but did so differently depending on the type of interaction participants had with the character. In both studies, sexual appeal cues produced greater disliking of the characters. Our discussion considers the findings with respect to character design in video games and other media entertainment.
... Again, existing research on audience responses to media content including narrative appreciation (Oliver & Bartsch, 2011), behavioral approbation (Zillmann, 2000), schema activation (Raney, 2004), and character individuation (Frazer et al., 2023) suggests that audiences maintain the capacity for actively recognizing moral factors, interpreting them within specific contexts, reasoning through their potential ramifications, as well as appreciating their aesthetic aspects. The correlations observed between these dimensions also suggest that individuals who demonstrate a higher level of MA are more likely to engage in MCX and MR, and vice versa. ...
This paper adopts a pluralist conceptualization of the construct of moral understanding, in particular within the context of audiences’ verbalization patterns in response to watching morally-laden narratives on YouTube. We propose eight unique dimensions along which expressions of moral understanding can be measured in naturalistic settings and demonstrate the pragmatic feasibility of leveraging Large Language Models for moral content analysis. Our findings suggest a heightened prevalence of dimensions including emotional response, moral awareness, moral contextualization, moral reasoning, and aesthetic perception in audience responses, suggesting the multifaceted ways in which audiences cognitively and affectively interpret moral themes as constructed within narratives. Additionally, we find that specific moral content dimensions, i.e., harm and loyalty, differentially activate multiple moral understanding dimensions. In doing so, this study provides initial evidence of the existence of robust linkages between moral content, as exemplified within popular short-film narratives, and the saliency of audiences’ expressed moral understanding.
... The mission "Montoya" from the single-player campaign was specifically used. The choice of this game was based on several considerations: its straightforward blocking and firing mechanics reduce the skill gap between novice and seasoned virtual reality gamers; the in-game avatar's minimalist design-showing only hands, a shield, and a gun-minimizes moral bias from physical appearance, consistent with research by Raney (2004) and Grizzard et al. (2018); and unlike the study by Hartmann and Vorderer (2010), which used UN soldier and terrorist avatars to delineate moral dichotomies, the enemies in "Crisis Brigade 2: Reloaded" are depicted in civilian clothes, blurring factional lines and eschewing clear moral distinctions. ...
Introduction
This study investigates the psychological mechanisms in virtual reality (VR) games, focusing on the interplay between character morality, self-attribution, presence, guilt, and their collective impact on player enjoyment. Based on Affective Disposition Theory, it hypothesizes that players’ moral judgments of characters significantly affect their engagement and enjoyment of VR narratives.
Methods
A post-test between-subjects experiment was conducted with 97 participants to examine the influence of character morality on guilt through the mediation of self-attribution, and how these factors affect players’ sense of presence and overall enjoyment in VR games.
Results
The findings indicate that self-attribution significantly mediates the relationship between character morality and guilt. Additionally, the sense of presence enhances enjoyment, with a stronger sense of ‘being there’ amplifying the emotional impact of players’ moral decisions.
Discussion
This study highlights the full mediating effect of self-attribution in the context of VR gaming, intensifying players’ emotional responses to moral dilemmas. The results suggest that VR game designers should consider the moral implications of game narratives and character actions to create more emotionally engaging and ethically reflective gaming experiences. These insights have significant implications for VR game design and ethics, promoting greater ethical sensitivity among players.
... More recent research, focused on the so-called Affective Disposition Theory, suggests that this phenomenon occurs because we tend to be more permissive with those characters that, from the start, we like. Scholars such as Raney (2003Raney ( , 2004Raney ( , 2017 and Zillmann (1991Zillmann ( , 1995Zillmann ( , 2000 have contributed to this line of inquiry. ...
The aim of this paper is to analyze how Taylor Swift's public persona has evolved over the last years, from her beginnings in the music industry to her latest works. To do so, we have studied some of the lyrics of her songs with the objective of understanding the three phases Swift has gone through in the creation of her personal brand: damsel in distress, hero and anti-hero. We have examined how, in her first albums, Swift protrayed herself as a naïve, young, woman always hoping to be rescued by her prince. Later, we have delved into how she depicts herself as a hero, so we have analized the coincidences between Campbell's hero's journey and some of the tracks in the album "1989". Finally, we have focused on how, since 2017, Taylor Swifts embodies the anti-hero, reviewing the shared traits between Swift's public persona and these characters of questionable morality. To this end, we have used some theoretical tools such as textual analysis or Greimas' actantial scheme and we have considered some of the most relevant studies on damsels in distress, the hero and the anti-hero.
... On the other hand, observing certain behaviors being punished creates a negative perception of them, and this negative perception discourages similar future behaviors through inhibitive agency (i.e., the anticipation of punishments such as self/other-condemnation, guilt). Raney (2004) applied SMD to explain how narrative entertainment viewers form positive dispositions (Zillmann, 2000) toward less-than-moral story protagonists. Raney argued schemas allow viewers to interpret characters as "heroes" based on narrative cues (see also Francemone et al., 2022;. ...
Mass communication researchers have applied Bandura’s selective moral disengagement (SMD) concept in diverse contexts to explain audiences’ acceptance of moral violations and reduced condemnation. Recent updates to moral psychology—specifically the application of social intuitionist theories—challenge SMD’s underlying assumptions, necessitating a reconceptualization. In this article, we incorporate modern social intuitionist theories of moral judgment into SMD’s underlying assumptions. We further propose a two-stage moral signal detection process consistent with current decision-making theory in order to explain how SMD reflects a modulation of both moral condemnation and moral commendation. Building on these extensions, we reconceptualize SMD’s eight original mechanisms as expanded continuums of moral influence applicable to diverse forms of moral perceptions and moral judgments. This reconceptualization of SMD removes unnecessary boundary conditions, improves the internal consistency of the theory, and can begin to resolve scholarly disagreements. We conclude the article by providing concrete suggestions for future empirical research.
... This deficiency is notable in several dimensions and warrants further investigation (Dwivedi et al., 2023). Raney (2004) asserts that the level of enjoyment (or satisfaction) an individual gets from using a particular medium is not just a function of a particular type of content; rather, it is also influenced by the context or environment in which the individual experiences mediated events. Similarly, Brojakowski (2015) describes the changes taking place in television enjoyment by examining the differences in the evolution of television viewing from a linear, pushing environment to an endless, viewer-generated pulling environment. ...
TikTok, a short video-sharing platform, has captured a massive audience since its inception in 2016. This article explores the evolution of rural media in China, the burgeoning TikTok rural market, and the unique landscape of rural TikTok users. By investigating the development trajectory of TikTok and probing into the individual usage patterns, motivations, and preferences of rural TikTok users, this study aims to gain deeper insights into their distinct characteristics. Furthermore, this study employs two theoretical frameworks, the uses and gratifications theory and the media enjoyment theory, to analyze the causal relationship between Chinese TikTok rural users and their direct demands and satisfaction levels. Leveraging a combination of big data crawling and comprehensive questionnaire surveys, we provide data-driven perspectives on rural TikTok users’ experiences, motivations, and challenges. Our findings reveal that TikTok has become a compelling entertainment and social interaction source for rural users, aligning with its original positioning. The adaptability of TikTok’s content curation algorithms caters to diverse age groups, contributing significantly to user satisfaction. However, content quality and influencer representation disparities persist as challenges for rural TikTok users. This research offers valuable insights into the practical issues faced by rural TikTok users and presents recommendations for their enhanced engagement with the platform. By bridging the urban–rural digital divide, this study contributes to a more equitable media landscape in China and underscores the platform’s role in reshaping the dynamics of knowledge dissemination and entertainment consumption in the knowledge-based economy of the twenty-first century.
... The concept of character morality (i.e., cinematic portrayal of morality) has been the central theme for an extant of research in media psychology and communication in recent decades. A number of prominent theoretical frameworks have been used to illustrate and explain the impacts of perceived character morality on hedonistic and eudemonic cinematic experiences including media enjoyment, entertainment appeal, character liking, and character appreciation (Eden et al., 2015Eden & Tamborini, 2017;Grizzard et al., 2018;Kleemans et al., 2017;Raney, 2004Raney, , 2011Tamborini, 2012;Tamborini et al., 2012). The Affective Disposition Theories (Raney, 2003;Zillmann, 2000;Zillmann & Cantor, 1977) suggested that entertainment appeal and character judgment are influenced by the moral values of the audience regarding what they consider as right or wrong. ...
Past research has demonstrated that cinematic portrayals of moral acts lead to meaningful affective responses (elevation), which in turn predict motivations for prosocial behaviors. To investigate the potential role of human virtues in this model, we employed the six dimensions of human virtues described in the virtue in action system as the theoretical framework. The effects of intrinsic (audience’s self-rated virtue profile) and perceived (virtues portrayed by the movie character as perceived by the audience) virtues on meaningful affective responses and motivations for virtuous acts were examined. Participants first completed a survey assessing their own virtue profile. After watching a meaningful movie, they were asked to rate the degree of virtue as exemplified by the protagonist along the six virtue dimensions, together with their emotional and motivational responses. The meaningful affect induced significantly predicted positive motivational outcomes, replicating the previous findings. Furthermore, the intrinsic virtue of the audience significantly predicted motivational outcomes after controlling for the effect of meaningful affect. Importantly, perceived virtues (PVs) significantly predicted the degree of meaningful affective response. These results supported the close relationship between meaningful affects and motivational outcomes, and showed novel evidence for the involvement of intrinsic and PVs in meaningful cinematic experiences.
... There are many examples of characters being successfully depicted as heroes, including McClane from the opening to this chapter. Most people enjoy seeing good things happen to these characters (see Raney 2004 for review), and people don't typically root for their failure. Their success is in part because the viewer is sufficiently psychologically distant from a fictional hero, and in part because writers are able to build many of these morally good characters without flaws (e.g., Captain America). ...
... Moreover, they reported the most enjoyment from over-retribution endings, followed by equitable-retribution endings, and the least enjoyment from under-retribution endings, which contradicted their expectation that equitable-retribution stories should be enjoyed the most. The authors explained that participants might temporarily relax their moral system to enjoy stories about unjust punishment, a behavior known as moral disengagement (Raney, 2004). In HUANG 2 terms of appreciation, participants appreciated under-retribution endings over equitable-and over-retribution endings because, as the authors explained, under-retribution narratives signal forgiveness, a moral virtue that links to appreciation (Oliver & Bartsch, 2010). ...
In recent years, Shuang Ju, a form of retribution narrative that depicts a simple story of smooth vengeance, has become increasingly popular in China. To partially replicate the audience entertainment experience of narrative retribution in a non-Western context, the current research examines the enjoyment and appreciation of these narratives among Chinese audiences. It also examines whether stress, a rising collective emotion in Chinese society, influences the audience’s appraisal of these narratives. Using an experimental survey in which participants read short stories that vary in the level of retribution, this research finds that audiences appreciate under-retribution stories more than equitable- and over-retribution narratives, but they equally enjoy all narratives. More importantly, as stress increases, the differences in enjoyment and appreciation among the three conditions decrease. These findings explain the wide appeal of Shuang Ju, confirming the relationship between the retribution levels and appraisals of retribution narratives. Additionally, they reveal a boundary condition for such a relationship and demonstrate the robustness of a set of experimental stimuli developed in previous research. Finally, these findings provide practical implications for entertainment businesses when creating appealing media products in a highly censored system.
... Central to this theory is the notion of observational learning and role models -both of which can occur during media consumption -and therefore Social Cognitive Theory is widely used to explain social media effects (Bandura, 1994). Similarly, Affective Disposition Theory (Zillmann and Cantor, 1972;Raney, 2004) links characters and plot elements to affective audience responses. There are, of course, many other interesting effects and theories of media influence to highlight, but for the sake of space, we refer readers to key reference works (Zillmann and Vorderer, 2000;Bryant and Oliver, 2008;Littlejohn and Foss, 2009;Nabi and Oliver, 2009;Dill, 2013;DeFleur, 2016). ...
Every day, the world of media is at our fingertips, whether it is watching movies, listening to the radio, or browsing online media. On average, people spend over 8 h per day consuming messages from the mass media, amounting to a total lifetime dose of more than 20 years in which conceptual content stimulates our brains. Effects from this flood of information range from short-term attention bursts (e.g., by breaking news features or viral ‘memes’) to life-long memories (e.g., of one’s favorite childhood movie), and from micro-level impacts on an individual’s memory, attitudes, and behaviors to macro-level effects on nations or generations. The modern study of media’s influence on society dates back to the 1940s. This body of mass communication scholarship has largely asked, “what is media’s effect on the individual?” Around the time of the cognitive revolution, media psychologists began to ask, “what cognitive processes are involved in media processing?” More recently, neuroimaging researchers started using real-life media as stimuli to examine perception and cognition under more natural conditions. Such research asks: “what can media tell us about brain function?” With some exceptions, these bodies of scholarship often talk past each other. An integration offers new insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms through which media affect single individuals and entire audiences. However, this endeavor faces the same challenges as all interdisciplinary approaches: Researchers with different backgrounds have different levels of expertise, goals, and foci. For instance, neuroimaging researchers label media stimuli as “naturalistic” although they are in many ways rather artificial. Similarly, media experts are typically unfamiliar with the brain. Neither media creators nor neuroscientifically oriented researchers approach media effects from a social scientific perspective, which is the domain of yet another species. In this article, we provide an overview of approaches and traditions to studying media, and we review the emerging literature that aims to connect these streams. We introduce an organizing scheme that connects the causal paths from media content → brain responses → media effects and discuss network control theory as a promising framework to integrate media content, reception, and effects analyses.
This study used semi-structured interviews (N = 23) with college students to explore hate-watching, defined here as “repeatedly watching people, things, or content we hate for the purpose of achieving some gratification.” Several important themes emerged from the analysis including (a) a pronounced desire for moral superiority and downward social comparison, (b) confirmation of existing beliefs, attitudes, values, and feelings, (c) a desire to understand “the other side” as perceived by hate-watchers, (d) a sense of “guilty pleasure”, and (e) social bonding. The findings offer new and exciting insight into modern viewing habits as they tend to defy the conventional wisdom of the literature regarding audiences gravitating toward content that affirms and reinforces existing beliefs, attitudes, values, and cognition. The implication is that hate-watching as a phenomenon may fuel societal polarization.
Four studies examine the appeal of protagonists who are sometimes immoral in real-world (Studies 1 & 2) and fictional (Studies 3 & 4) settings. In both, character appeal is influenced by the combination of moral/immoral behaviors a protagonist performs and their moral/immoral behavior relative to another person’s (i.e., their moral superiority/inferiority). Additionally, Study 2 examines the effect of character behavior (moral/immoral vs. highly self-beneficial) on appeal, finding that if two protagonists are equally immoral, one who elsewise behaves morally at times is more appealing than one who is elsewise self-beneficial. Studies 3 and 4 replicate these findings using a fictional drama and fantasy premise instead of a real-world setting. Findings suggest the effect of characters’ immoral behavior on appeal varies based on the moral behavior of comparison characters regardless of the setting’s fictionality. Discussion considers whether moral superiority alters the likelihood that audiences will emulate an imperfect hero’s immoral actions.
Full text available here: https://playstorypress.org/books/the-psychgeist-of-pop-culture-the-umbrella-academy/
Introducción:
Existe abundante investigación sobre la representación del colectivo LGTBIQ+ en la ficción. Sin embargo, son escasos los trabajos que han examinado los procesos de recepción que conectan a las audiencias con los personajes que pertenecen a dicho colectivo.
Objetivos:
Analizar el efecto de la representación audiovisual de la intensidad sexual de las expresiones de afecto entre personajes LGTBIQ+ en los procesos de recepción.
Metodología:
Se realizó un experimento online con un diseño de dos grupos aleatorios (N = 177, un 30.5 % de personas LGTBIQ+), siendo la variable independiente la intensidad sexual (baja versus alta) en escenas de amor romántico queer. Se midieron las variables sociodemográficas y de diferencias individuales (frecuencia de contacto y actitudes hacia el colectivo LGTBIQ+). Inmediatamente después del visionado de las piezas audiovisuales se evaluaron las variables de recepción (identificación con el protagonista, evaluación, interacción parasocial y emociones sentidas).
Resultados:
Los resultados mostraron que ambas formas de expresar el afecto ejercían un efecto similar en los procesos de recepción. La pertenencia al colectivo LGTBIQ+, el contacto con personas LGTBIQ+ y mantener actitudes favorables hacia dicho colectivo se relacionaban con una recepción más positiva.
Discusión:
Las diferencias individuales actúan como variables predictoras de los procesos de recepción, tal como plantea el modelo de susceptibilidad diferencial a los efectos mediáticos.
Conclusiones:
Nuestro trabajo contribuye a la investigación sobre procesos de recepción en el que están implicados personas que pertenecen a colectivos estigmatizados, en este caso, el colectivo LGTBIQ+.
Media scholars and consumers alike ponder the question “why do we enjoy the stories we enjoy?” Affective disposition theory is one of the leading explanations of the enjoyment process. The theory – more accurately, set of theories – conceptualizes enjoyment of media content as a product of a viewer's emotional affiliations with characters and the storyline outcomes associated with those characters. Although the theory does not seek to predict whether an individual will like or dislike a specific character or story, it provides keen insight into the process through which people enjoy these things (→ emotion; Enjoyment/Entertainment Seeking).
Media scholars and consumers alike ponder the question “why do we enjoy the stories we enjoy?” Affective disposition theory (ADT) is one of the leading explanations of the enjoyment process. The theory – more accurately, set of theories – conceptualizes enjoyment of media content as a product of a viewer's emotional affiliations with characters and the storyline outcomes associated with those characters. Although the theory does not seek to predict whether an individual will like or dislike a specific character or story, it provides keen insight into the process through which people enjoy these things (→ Emotion; Enjoyment/Entertainment Seeking).
As early as 1962, → Elihu Katz and David Foulkes wondered why communication researchers had almost exclusively addressed mass media's persuasive capacities (→ Persuasion) and almost completely neglected its role as an agent of entertainment. Their surprise was caused by the simple observation that the bulk of mass media consumption at that time served entertainment needs – an observation that is equally, if not even more, valid today (→ Exposure to Communication Content). Cinema movies, television series, radio music, illustrated magazines, and video games (to name just a few examples) frequently attract mass audiences and serve as reliable “cash cows” of the media industries (Wolf 1999). Interestingly, communication research has begun to reflect the remarkable importance of media entertainment very late in the day. Since then, significant theoretical progress has been made on the description and explanation of entertainment experiences (Bryant & Vorderer 2006).
A study was conducted to examine the roles that adolescents' attitudes about sexuality and punishment play in their enjoyment of R-rated “slasher films.” Ninety-six high school students completed a series of attitude questionnaires and rated their perceptions of a videotaped preview of a slasher film that varied the sexuality in the portrayal (sexual, nonsexual) with the gender of the victim who was killed at the film's conclusion. More permissive sexual attitudes and lower levels of punitiveness were associated with greater enjoyment of frightening films. However, traditional attitudes toward females' sexuality were positively associated with gore-watching motivations (e.g., watching slasher films “to see the victims get what they deserve”). The manipulations of sexual behavior and gender of victim in the video preview had little effect on ratings of enjoyment overall. However, punitive attitudes toward sexuality were associated with greater overall enjoyment of the previews, and punitiveness was associated with greater enjoyment of the previews featuring sexuality. For male subjects, more traditional attitudes about females' sexuality were associated with greater enjoyment of previews featuring female victims.
Studies of media content consistently find that black criminal suspects are portrayed more frequently and more menacingly than white suspects in television news stories of violent crime. Here we investigate the impact of such portrayals on white viewers’ attitudes by means of a video experiment in which we manipulate only the visual image of the race of the suspect in a television news story of violent crime. We found, consistent with our expectations, that even a brief visual image of an African American male suspect in a televised crime story was capable of activating racial stereotypes, which in turn heavily biased whites’ evaluations of the suspect along racial lines. Thus, white participants in our experiment who endorsed negative stereotypes of African Americans viewed the black suspect in the crime story as more guilty, more deserving of punishment, more likely to commit future violence, and with more fear and loathing than a similarly portrayed white suspect. In the conclusion of the article, we discuss the implications of our findings for the study of racial stereotyping, visual images, and the intersection of race and crime in television newscasts.
This study tests uses and gratifications theory with 1209 college students. The results find that students’ media use and surveillance needs increase with year in college. Consistent with uses and gratifications theory, demographic differences and the gratifications sought drive news media use. More precisely, increasing surveillance needs results in increased use of all news media, while entertainment needs result in television news and CNN viewing. Only print media and CNN use, however, are related to current events knowledge.
This study replicated and extended previous research that investigated the contribution
of soap opera viewing motives to cultivation. A survey method was
employed to measure soap opera viewing motives, attitudes, behaviors, and
cultivation perceptions of 313 college student soap opera viewers. Contrary to
the assumptions of the cultivation hypothesis, the limited cultivation effect
observed was related to more instrumental soap opera viewing motives, as well
as higher soap opera viewing levels, longer viewing duration, and higher levels
of affinity and perceived realism.
A survey of political preferences and attitudes conducted during the US Senate Watergate hearings of 1973 was used to examine hypotheses developed from selective exposure theory. Three groups of voters (
N = 82)—Richard Nixon supporters, George McGovern supporters, and undecideds—participated in a 3-wave panel survey conducted (a) just before the Watergate hearings started, (b) midway through the hearings, and (c) just before the end of the hearings. Responses that reflected interest in and attention to Watergate-related matters gave support to both the selective approach and avoidance components of the selective exposure hypothesis: The Nixon supporters reported less interest in and attention paid to Watergate-related matters than did members of the other groups. Responses to questions that probed for general knowledge about Watergate committee matters complemented the selective exposure analyses: Nixon supporters appeared to know less about the committee proceedings than the undecideds or McGovern supporters. Analyses of behavioral intentions and evaluations of the attitude object illustrated the importance of studying selective exposure effects. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Experimental research on intergroup discrimination in favor of one's own group is reviewed in terms of the basis of differentiation between in-group and out-group and in terms of the response measure on which in-group bias is assessed. Results of the research reviewed suggest that (a) factors such as intergroup competition, similarity, and status differentials affect in-group bias indirectly by influencing the salience of distinctions between in-group and out-group, (b) the degree of intergroup differentiation on a particular response dimension is a joint function of the relevance of intergroup distinctions and the favorableness of the in-group's position on that dimension, and (c) the enhancement of in-group bias is more related to increased favoritism toward in-group members than to increased hostility toward out-group members. Implications of these results for positive applications of group identification (e.g., a shift of in-group bias research from inter- to intragroup contexts) are discussed. (67 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This research examined the role of mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Regulatory self-sanctions can be selectively disengaged from detrimental conduct by converting harmful acts to moral ones through linkage to worthy purposes, obscuring personal causal agency by diffusion and displacement of responsibility, misrepresenting or disregarding the injurious effects inflicted on others, and vilifying the recipients of maltreatment by blaming and dehumanizing them. The study examined the structure and impact of moral disengagement on detrimental conduct and the psychological processes through which it exerts its effects. Path analyses reveal that moral disengagement fosters detrimental conduct by reducing prosocialness and anticipatory self-censure and by promoting cognitive and affective reactions conducive to aggression. The structure of the paths of influence is very similar for interpersonal aggression and delinquent conduct. Although the various mechanisms of moral disengagement operate in concert, moral reconstruals of harmful conduct by linking it to worthy purposes and vilification of victims seem to contribute most heavily to engagement in detrimental activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The present study is one of a series exploring the role of social categorization in intergroup behaviour. It has been found in our previous studies that in ‚minimal' situations, in which the subjects were categorized into groups on the basis of visual judgments they had made or of their esthetic preferences, they clearly discriminated against members of an outgroup although this gave them no personal advantage. However, in these previous studies division into groups was still made on the basis of certain criteria of ‚real' similarity between subjects who were assigned to the same category. Therefore, the present study established social categories on an explicitly random basis without any reference to any such real similarity.
It was found that, as soon as the notion of ‚group' was introduced into the situation, the subjects still discriminated against those assigned to another random category. This discrimination was considerably more marked than the one based on a division of subjects in terms of interindividual similarities in which the notion of ‚group' was never explicitly introduced. In addition, it was found that fairness was also a determinant of the subjects' decisions.
The results are discussed from the point of view of their relevance to a social‐cognitive theory of intergroup behaviour.
Presented cartoons and jokes depicting exchanges between a superior and a subordinate to 40 undergraduates and 40 male professionals. In 1 condition the subordinate "had the final word" in the encounter and thus temporarily dominated the superior; in the other condition, the transitory dominance was exerted in the opposite direction. The cartoons represented superior-subordinate relationships in parent-child, teacher-student, and employer-employee interactions. A model was advanced proposing that the intensity of the mirth response to a humorous communication is a function of the degree to which the outcomes projected by the communication are favorable to the receiver, e.g., Ss with primarily subordinate experiences would exhibit greater appreciation for humorous communications that show a subordinate temporarily dominating a superior. Highly significant and consistent results support the predictions for all 3 domains of interaction. Secondary data on sex differences and aspects of novelty are reported to discount possible alternative explanations. (17 ref.)
America is fascinated by violence—where it comes from in ourselves, how it spreads through society, what effect it has on younger generations, and how it looks, in all its chilling and sanguine detail. This arresting collection of essays examines numerous facets of violence in contemporary American culture, ranging across literature, film, philosophy, religion, fairy tales, video games, children’s toys, photojournalism, and sports. Lively and jargon-free, Why We Watch is the first book to offer a careful look at why we are drawn to depictions of violence and why there is so large a market for violent entertainment. The distinguished contributors, hailing from fields such as anthropology, history, literary theory, psychology, communications, and film criticism, include Allen Guttmann, Vicki Goldberg, Maria Tatar, Joanne Cantor, J. Hoberman, Clark McCauley, Maurice Bloch, Dolf Zillmann, and the volume’s editor, Jeffery Goldstein. Together, while acknowledging that violent imagery has saturated western cultures for millennia, they aim to define what is distinctive about America’s contemporary culture of violence. Clear, accessible and timely, this is a book for all concerned with the multiple points of access to violent representation in 1990s America.
This chapter discusses the social psychologists study “top of the head” phenomena in their experimental investigations. Attention within the social environment is selective. It is drawn to particular features of the environment either as a function of qualities intrinsic to those features (such as light or movement) or as a function of the perceiver's own dispositions and temporary need states. These conditions are outlined in the chapter. As a result of differential attention to particular features, information about those features is more available to the perceiver. Relative to the quantity of information retained about other features, more is retained about the salient features. When the salient person is the self, the same effects occur, and the individual is also found to show more consistency in attitudes and behaviors. These processes may occur primarily in situations which are redundant, unsurprising, uninvolving, and unarousing. They seem to occur automatically and substantially without awareness, and as such, they differ qualitatively from the intentional, conscious, controlled kind of search which characterizes all the behavior.
This study took popular music from the Top 30 charts and, in a pretest, evaluated its energy and joyfulness as musical qualities. The findings were used to create sets of musical selections that were either low or high in these qualities. In the experiment proper, respondents were placed in states of bad, neutral, or good moods and then, in an ostensibly independent study, provided the opportunity to freely choose from the sets of musical selections. The selections were offered by computer software that recorded individual exposure times by selection. To ensure selectivity, exposure time was limited to about one third of the total running time of all available selections. Consistent with predictions from mood-management theory, respondents in bad moods elected to listen to highly energetic-joyful music for longer periods than did respondents in good moods. Respondents in bad moods, moreover, were more decisive in exercising their musical preferences. Following the listening period, respondents' moods did not appreciably differ across the experimental mood conditions.
The article proposes a theoretical framework in which moral reasoning about mediated crime and punishment is defined and combined with existing, affect-driven entertainment theory to yield an integrated theory of enjoyment. The authors analyze how crime dramas serve as statements about justice and then address how moral deliberation about the propriety of those statements impacts enjoyment. The authors report research findings to support the analysis of cognitive processing during crime dramas distinct from affective processing. The article also suggests future means by which the integrated theory of enjoyment can be examined.
This investigation examined the role of motives, attitudes, and audience activity in explaining the affective, cognitive, and behavioral involvement of 328 daytime soap opera viewers. Because inter correlations were found among motives, attitudes, activities, and involvement variables, canonical correlation analysis was used. There were two multivariate patterns. First, except for viewing to pass time, more salient viewing motivations (especially exciting entertainment and social utility), perceived realism, viewing intention, and attention were related to parasocial interaction, post viewing cognition, and post viewing discussion. Second, viewing for social utility, but not for voyeurism, and the lack of realism were related to post viewing discussion, but not to parasocial interaction. These audience orientations and the role of involvement in media uses and effects were discussed.
Zillmann's “annoyance reduction” hypotheses were used to test the relationship between affective states and voluntary television selection and use. The results indicated that annoyed individuals viewed television significantly less than praised individuals.
An experiment was conducted to examine the roles of authoritarianism and portrayals of race in Caucasian viewers’ responses to reality‐based crime dramas. Subjects viewed a segment from a reality‐based program that varied the race of the criminal suspect (African‐American, Caucasian). Subsequently, subjects indicated their enjoyment of the segment as well as their perceptions of the characters portrayed. Authoritarianism was associated with greater enjoyment of the crime video and more negative evaluations of the criminal suspects, but only if the criminal suspects were African‐American rather than Caucasian. Authoritarianism was also associated with more favorable evaluations of police officers.
1 Neil Vidmar, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario, is on leave as a Russell Sage Resident in Law and Social Science at Yale University's School of Law.
An experiment examined the factors that contribute to children's enjoyment of frightening mass media, in an effort to extend recent research with adults. The study focused on suspense (indexed by worry and fear) and character liking as mediators of enjoyment. Children at two age levels viewed a scary program that concluded with either a successful resolution of a threat or no resolution. Forewarning of the threat and information about the happy outcome were varied. Predictions were derived from excitation transfer theory and disposition theory, as well as from theory and research on relevant developmental changes. Prior knowledge of the happy outcome reduced liking for the program, but this effect was not mediated by worry or fear. For both age groups, negative affect during the program was associated with marginally greater enjoyment of the resolved ending, but less enjoyment of the unresolved ending. In contrast, negative affect was associated with greater enjoyment of both versions of the program overall. This and other findings support the view that certain elements of suspense are enjoyable, independent of the outcome. There was some evidence that children's ability to enjoy fear‐inducing media develops with age, and that their enjoyment is increasingly influenced by their affect toward the characters. Skin temperature and heart rate provided no physiological support for the excitation transfer hypothesis. Sex differences in the relationship between negative affect and enjoyment were also observed.
The popular notion of identification with characters in drama is examined, and its usefulness in explaining emotional reactivity to drama is questioned. The concept of empathy is developed as an alternative, and its usefulness is demonstrated. Empathy theory is reviewed, and selected supportive findings are presented. Reflexive, acquired, and deliberate forms of empathy are distinguished as motor mimicry, empathy proper, and perspective taking. Special attention is given to conditions under which empathy reverses to counterempathy. The development of affective dispositions toward characters featured in drama is considered crucial, and the dynamics of character development are examined in terms of dispositional consequences. Empathic reactions are linked to positive affective dispositions and counterempathic reactions to negative affective dispositions. Emotional involvement with drama is explained on the basis of dispositionally controlled empathy and counterempathy.
Social identity theory holds that social group memberships become part of the psychological self; affecting thoughts, feelings, and behavior. However, tests of this hypothesis to date have mainly involved judgmental dependent measures. A method adapted from Aron and associates can provide more direct evidence. Subjects made speeded self-descriptiveness judgments for a variety of traits. Responses were slower and involved more errors for traits on which the individual believed he or she mismatched an in-group, compared with matching traits. Matches or mismatches between the self and a salient out-group had no effect. This evidence suggests that cognitive representations of the self and an in-group are directly linked, to the point where reports about the self are facilitated for traits on which the self and in-group are perceived as similar, and inhibited for dissimilar traits.
In this study, I investigated the relation between moral judgment and the enjoyment of crime dramas by varying the relative severity of punishment levied for a crime. One hundred fifty-one participants rated their enjoyment of a video clip depicting a crime with the perpetrator being punished either excessively or not at all. In keeping with previous literature, I predicted that the different punishments would elicit different levels of moral judgment, which would then impact enjoyment. The results indicate that crime drama enjoyment was consistently predicted by certain social justice attitudes and resulting moral judgments about the content. The findings lend support to moral sanction theory and the integrated model of crime drama enjoyment and shed further insight into how viewer cognitions impact dispositional affiliations formed toward characters in media entertainment.
Affective dispositions toward public persons and groups were ascertained and related to enjoyment reactions to news reports featuring these parties as recipients of bad or good fortune. Consistent with predictions derived from drama theory, favorable dispositions heightened enjoyment reactions to good‐fortune reports, and they suppressed such reactions to bad‐fortune reports. Unfavorable dispositions, in contrast, heightened enjoyment reactions to bad‐fortune reports and suppressed such reactions to good‐fortune reports. Regarding the revelation of bad fortunes, the effects were limited to reports of comparatively minor misfortunes. Reports of grievous harm to target persons were essentially unaffected by dispositional variations.
Children aged 7 to 12 were interviewed about their favorite TV character. Nearly all boys and about half of the girls selected same‐sex favorites. Regression analyses used perceived character traits (attractiveness, strength, humor, intelligence, social behavior) to predict wishful identification and parasocial interaction with characters. For male characters, wishful identification was predicted by intelligence and (for girls only) humor; parasocial interaction was predicted by intelligence, attractiveness, and (for boys only) strength. In marked contrast, for female characters (chosen only by girls), attractiveness was the only significant predictor. Although girls rated female characters as more intelligent than male characters, this trait apparently was not an important determinant of attraction. Interpretations of the findings and implications for socialization effects are discussed.
Respondents were placed into a bad or good mood and then provided with reading choices. They chose magazine articles that featured either bad or good news. In agreement with theoretical expectations, women in a bad mood were drawn to good news, sampling significantly more of it than women in a good mood. Men did not show this preference, however. Gender-specific selection of news stories was further evident in that women in a bad mood sampled less bad news than did men in a bad mood, whereas women in a good mood sampled more bad news than men in a good mood did.
• As the title suggests, this book examines the psychology of interpersonal relations. In the context of this book, the term "interpersonal relations" denotes relations between a few, usually between two, people. How one person thinks and feels about another person, how he perceives him and what he does to him, what he expects him to do or think, how he reacts to the actions of the other--these are some of the phenomena that will be treated. Our concern will be with "surface" matters, the events that occur in everyday life on a conscious level, rather than with the unconscious processes studied by psychoanalysis in "depth" psychology. These intuitively understood and "obvious" human relations can, as we shall see, be just as challenging and psychologically significant as the deeper and stranger phenomena. The discussion will center on the person as the basic unit to be investigated. That is to say, the two-person group and its properties as a superindividual unit will not be the focus of attention. Of course, in dealing with the person as a member of a dyad, he cannot be described as a lone subject in an impersonal environment, but must be represented as standing in relation to and interacting with another person. The chapter topics included in this book include: Perceiving the Other Person; The Other Person as Perceiver; The Naive Analysis of Action; Desire and Pleasure; Environmental Effects; Sentiment; Ought and Value; Request and Command; Benefit and Harm; and Reaction to the Lot of the Other Person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• As the title suggests, this book examines the psychology of interpersonal relations. In the context of this book, the term "interpersonal relations" denotes relations between a few, usually between two, people. How one person thinks and feels about another person, how he perceives him and what he does to him, what he expects him to do or think, how he reacts to the actions of the other--these are some of the phenomena that will be treated. Our concern will be with "surface" matters, the events that occur in everyday life on a conscious level, rather than with the unconscious processes studied by psychoanalysis in "depth" psychology. These intuitively understood and "obvious" human relations can, as we shall see, be just as challenging and psychologically significant as the deeper and stranger phenomena. The discussion will center on the person as the basic unit to be investigated. That is to say, the two-person group and its properties as a superindividual unit will not be the focus of attention. Of course, in dealing with the person as a member of a dyad, he cannot be described as a lone subject in an impersonal environment, but must be represented as standing in relation to and interacting with another person. The chapter topics included in this book include: Perceiving the Other Person; The Other Person as Perceiver; The Naive Analysis of Action; Desire and Pleasure; Environmental Effects; Sentiment; Ought and Value; Request and Command; Benefit and Harm; and Reaction to the Lot of the Other Person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Moral agency has dual aspects manifested in both the power to refrain from behaving inhumanely and the proactive power to behave humanely. Moral agency is embedded in a broader socio-cognitive self-theory encompassing affective self-regulatory mechanisms rooted in personal standards linked to self-sanctions. Moral functioning is thus governed by self-reactive selfhood rather than by dispassionate abstract reasoning. The self-regulatory mechanisms governing moral conduct do not come into play unless they are activated and there are many psychosocial mechanisms by which moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct. The moral disengagement may centre on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by moral justification, sanitising language and exonerative social comparison; disavowal of personal agency in the harm one causes by diffusion or displacement of responsibility; disregarding or minimising the injurious effects of one's actions; and attribution of blame to, and dehumanisation of, those who are victimised. Social cognitive theory adopts an interactionist perspective to morality in which moral actions are the products of the reciprocal interplay of personal and social influences. Given the many mechanisms for disengaging moral control at both the individual and collective level, civilised life requires, in addition to humane personal standards, safeguards built into social systems that uphold compassionate behaviour and renounce cruelty.
The purpose of this study is to determine the relative contributions of two factors- content and schema-as an explanation for how people make interpretations about how much violence they perceive in television programs. An experiment was conducted in which 99 participants were exposed to either a high, moderate, or low amount of violence in one episode of a broadcasted television series. This study offers support for three major propositions. First, television viewers rely much more on their personal schema than on program content in constructing their interpretations of violence. Second, when interpreting violence, viewers share a story schema that focuses on the characteristics of explicitness and graphicness. Third, although viewers may share the same story schema, they appear to make different judgments on the schema elements, and hence their judgments about violence vary.
This study examined self-serving and group-serving attribution biases under conditions of individual and group success and failure. Previous research has found evidence for a self-serving bias in the context of laboratory groups, especially in conditions of group success. The present study used 52 male and female intercollegiate athletes involved in team sports who rated the performance of themselves and teammates on a series of questionnaires. Group-serving biases were stronger than self-serving bias, and this effect emerged even in the face of failure.
This book is "primarily a collation of the findings of published research… . Part I deals with mass communication as an agent of persuasion… . Part II deals with the effects of specific kinds of media content." A new orientation is suggested: the "Phenomenistic" approach which "is in essence a shift away from the tendency to regard mass communication as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects, toward a view of the media as influences, working amid other influences, in a total situation." The following generalizations are central to organizing the research findings: (a) mass communication by itself does not act as a necessary and suficient cause of audience effects and (b) mass communication typically reinforces existing conditions, rather than changing them. (270 ref.) From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:1GI02K. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
To assess the effects of the 1980 Reagan-Carter presidential debate, samples of college students were surveyed in the laboratory and in the field before and after watching the debate. Responses were consistent across groups, indicating that both selective recall and selective evaluation occurred. The plurality of subjects in both groups (i.e., field and laboratory) were better at recalling their preferred candidate's arguments than those of the opposition. In addition, judgments of who won were biased in favor of predebate presidential preference. Commitment was not significantly related to either process (i.e., selective evaluation or selective recall), indicating that both strongly committed and weakly committed individuals may selectively encode and selectively evaluate incoming political information. These findings are discussed in light of the timing of the debate.
This study took popular music from the Top 30 charts and, in a pretest, evaluated its energy and joyfulness as musical qualities. The findings were used to create sets of musical selections that were either low or high in these qualities. In the experiment proper, respondents were placed in states of bad, neutral, or good moods and then, in an ostensibly independent study, provided the opportunity to freely choose from the sets of musical selections. The selections were offered by computer software that recorded individual exposure times by selection. To ensure selectivity, exposure time was limited to about one third of the total running time of all available selections. Consistent with predictions from mood-management theory, respondents in bad moods elected to listen to highly energetic-joyful music for longer periods than did respondents in good moods. Respondents in bad moods, moreover, were more decisive in exercising their musical preferences. Following the listening period, respondents' moods did not appreciably differ across the experimental mood conditions.
This experimental investigation explores the use of humor in violent action films, focusing on the effects of wisecracking heroes and villains on audience distress. An action film was edited to create control film versions without wisecracking dialogue. The research revealed contrast effects. Among female viewers, hero wisecracks in an action film increased distress reactions to the film, but lessened distressful reactions to subsequent televised depictions of real, nonhumorous violence. Conversely, males exposed to hero humor found the film marginally less distressing, but rated depictions of real violence more distressing. For all viewers, effects of villain wisecracks tended to parallel females' reactions to hero wisecracks. Disposition theory is offered as a plausible explanations of study findings.
This study identifies four motivations adolescents report for viewing graphic horror films: gore watching, thrill watching, independent watching, and problem watching. On the basis of a uses and gratifications model of media effects, it is argued that viewing motivations are predictors of responses to graphic horror. This study also seeks to extend Zillmann's excitation-transfer model of media effects to predict under what conditions viewing-generated arousal is transferred to positive or negative affect. The dispositional characteristics of fearfulness, empathy, and sensation seeking are found to be related to different viewing motivations, providing a viewing-related personality profile for the four different types of adolescent viewers. The four viewing motivations are found to be related to viewers’cognitive and affective responses to horror films, as well as viewers’tendency to identify with either the killers or victims in these films. Directions for future research addressing the role of viewing motivations in the relationship between violent media, cognitive and affective responses, and subsequent behavioral aggression are discussed.
An audiovisually presented fairy tale, which involved provocation and retaliation as the central theme, was created in three versions. Relative to the provocation, retaliation was too mild, equitable, or too severe. Children at the developmental stages of expiatory retribution (4-yr olds) and equitable retribution (7- and 8-yr olds) served as subjects. Appreciation of the presentation was measured in facial displays, in structured interviews, and in ratings. Consistently across measures, it was found that for children at the stage of expiatory retribution, appreciation increased with the severity of the retaliatory acts. Children at the stage of equitable retribution, in contrast, appreciated equitable retaliation the most. At this stage, inequitable retaliation (too mild or too severe) was found to impair appreciation significantly. The findings were interpreted as consistent with the proposal that the depiction of punitive, retaliatory activities will be enjoyed the more, the closer they approximate the viewer's moral expectations.
There is a parallel between our tendency to infer the attitudes of an individual on the basis of his or her behavior, regardless of the external constraints (Jones & Harris, 1967; Ross, 1977), and our tendency to infer the attitudes of a group on the basis of the group's decision, regardless of the group decision rule. The present research focuses on this latter process. What we term the group attribution error consists of the tendency to assume that group decisions reflect members' attitudes. This assumption can be erroneous because group decision rules, in addition to members' attitudes, can influence group decisions. In Experiment 1, members of a community in which a water conservation law was or was not instituted were assumed to have correspondent attitudes, regardless of how the community decision was made. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects inferred a greater correspondence between out-group decisions and out-group attitudes than between an in-group decision and in-group attitudes. The fourth experiment found that subjects committed the group attribution error because they attended as much to the outcome of a recall election as to the actual proportion of voters for and against the recall. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that subjects' inferences of jury members' attitudes were influenced not only by the final jury vote but also by the actual decision, which was determined by the vote plus the decision rule by which the jury was bound. The results are related to previous research on the fundamental attribution error, stereotyping, and polarized appraisals of out-groups.
This study in vestigated the merits of various theoretical rationales for predicting viewer's affective responses to the expressed emotions of a protagonist. A film depicting a child undergoning an emotion-inducing experience was produced in six versions and shown to elementary school children. The versions effectd a factorial variation in (a) the type of behavior exhibited by the protagonist in the initial sequences (malevolent, neutral, benevolent) and (b) the emotion expressed by the protagonist in the final sequence (euphoria, dysphoria). When the protagonist behaved benevolently or neutrally, the affective responses of viewers were concordant with those of the protagonist, but when he behaved malevolently, viewer's affective responses were discordant with his. The latter finding was seen to be in conflict with predictions based strictly on empathy. The rationale that was considered to account best for the findings was based on the assumption that the observer's affective disposition mediates the tendency to respond concordantly or discordantly to another's emotions.
This article summarizes a project supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation on the attractions of violent entertainment. We consider why violence is such a prominent feature of entertainment. The audiences for violent entertainment are examined, as is the nature of the violence that attracts them. The role of sensation-seeking, context, the justice motive, and social control in the entertainment experience are considered. Violent entertainment is placed in historical and social contexts, demonstrating that its appeal varies with the times.